Ammo procurement chief wants faster response.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana

The Army's office in charge of" ammunition procurement--which manages 191 programs--wants to make its projects more visible to industry, in an effort to improve responsiveness to emerging combat needs.

An overarching industrial base strategy that will look at lessons learned from Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom is "the hardest thing I am working on right now," said Brig. Gen. Paul Izzo, the Army's program executive officer for ammunition. "We are trying to get this straight, because of future contingencies that we do not know where exactly they are going to be."

The analysis will attempt to identify future needs and how to go about producing the critical items, he said. "It's very tedious to get through every item. Some items have 30-40 contractors or suppliers."

"We want to get it right," he told the 2003 National Defense Industrial Association armaments conference. "We want the confidence in the contractors and all the folks working in ammunition to get a coherent plan. That way we can lay it out and fight for more dollars."

An industrial base command center was established almost two years ago, said Izzo. The center is looking to answer critical questions such as dependency on foreign suppliers and availability of critical raw material.

Izzo said his office wants to be able to give contractors incentive to invest. Since the end of the Cold War, ammunition production has slipped dramatically, he added.

"Three years ago, there were 370 different types of contractors. Now there are less than 70 for some of our most critical parts," he said.

"It is essential to communicate with the commanders in the field, to send out PEO representatives that serve as a link between the commanders and contractors," Izzo noted. In the future, it is important that the acquisition community receives real-time information about the soldiers' needs, "so we can do our job better," he said.

Before the creation of PEO ammunition nearly two years ago, program managers were in disparate organizations. The idea of PEO Ammunition is "to bundle them [the PMs] and get efficiency," Izzo told National Defense. "Take the medium caliber 25mm for the Bradley, for example: we buy them for the other services; we buy them for Bradley; we buy them in bulk. [We have to] try to get a plan on how many total you will need over a period of time."

Such approach would ensure long-term contracts and relationships instead of "bouncing all over," said Izzo.

His office has a budget of...